The Virtual Memories Show
A weekly conversation about books, art, comics and culture -- not necessarily in that order. Hosted by Gil Roth
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Episode 643 - Kate Maruyama
06/17/2025
Episode 643 - Kate Maruyama
One of my fave guest/friends, , rejoins the show to celebrate her wonderful new novel, (Running Wild Press)! We talk about the book's long gestation/publishing history, Kate's love of old Hollywood & costume design, closeted movie stars and how she told the story of a gay relationship in the '30s & '40s, and how it felt to write a non-horror horror story. We get into her own Hollywood experience in the '90s, how it informs Alterations, and how it felt to repeatedly smash into the glass ceiling, as well as how ghosts creep into everything she writes, how older people become invisible but have stories to tell, and how important it was to have a champion in for this novel. We also discuss present-moment Los Angeles, the craft book about novella-writing she's co-writing, the need to decolonize her writing students, the (maybe non-existent) influence of Jodie Foster's on Alterations, the essay she wrote around the decline & death of her mother, , and more. Follow Kate on and • More info • Support The Virtual Memories Show via , , or , and subscribe to
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Episode 642 - David Denby
06/09/2025
Episode 642 - David Denby
With his fantastic new book, (Holt), writer and critic explores the impact on American culture of Jews Unbound through profiles of Leonard Bernstein, Mel Brooks, Betty Friedan, and Norman Mailer. We talk about how he selected his four subjects, how each of them came of age in an environment that Jews hadn't experienced in millennia, the ways each handled the responsibilities of family against their careers, the difference between "Jew" and "Jewish," and which one unfolded the most to him over the course of writing the book. We get into why Bernstein's greatest role may have been as a teacher, how Mailer's magnetism persisted way beyond its expiration date, how Friedan changed the world but was always challenged by her midwest upbringing, and whether Brooks was being disingenuous when he made musical numbers of our the Inquisition and Hitler. We also discuss judgements David made over the course of his career as a , what he did when he finally gave up reviewing and how he eased back into the cinema, why he revisited the course at Columbia a few years ago, after previously revisiting it 30+ years ago for , his take on my my lightning round of classic lit questions, his non-Le Carré experience in East Berlin, his reaction to my parents taking me to when I was 9, and more. Follow David on • More info • Support The Virtual Memories Show via , , or , and subscribe to
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Episode 641 - Peter Stothard
06/03/2025
Episode 641 - Peter Stothard
Can we find the poet in their poems? With (Yale University Press), explores how the life of the great Roman poet unfolds though his art and the histories. We talk about why he wrote this biography through a critical study of Horace's poems (and why that's been a controversial approach), how Horace embodied the artist-as-madman long before the Romantic era, and why it was important to show the alienness of Horace's verse and how nervous Peter was about translating him into English to show how the Latin works. We get into Horace's place in Rome's history, how he bridged Greek poetic modes into Latin, the variety of genres Horace worked in (and invented), and why the poet was cancelled early and often over the centuries. We also discuss mortality and legacy, how Horace & I each reacted to not getting killed by falling trees, why a certain Great Books program is so Athens-centric, how Peter's secondary school introduced him to "INCIPE!," "Sapere Aude," and "Carpe Diem," among other Horace-isms, and more! Follow Peter on • More info • Support The Virtual Memories Show via , , or , and subscribe to
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Episode 640 - Cecile Wajsbrot
05/27/2025
Episode 640 - Cecile Wajsbrot
With her bewitching and beautiful novel (Seagull Books, translated from French by , who joins our conversation), takes us on a tour of Chenobyl's Forbidden Zone, the High Line in NYC, Dresden, Paris, under the shadow of the Time Passes section of Virginia Woolf's . We talk about the challenges of writing a first-person novel about translation, the strange ways Woolf has followed Cecile throughout her careers as author & translator, and how it felt to see her novel about translating Virginia Woolf into French get translated into English. We get into her literary career, how Time Passes became a stand-in for her fascination with destruction, why she's translated Woolf's three times over thirty years (and whether the first one got her into the bad graces of the editor of Le Monde de Livres), what it was like to subvert the translator's typical role of invisibility with this novel, and the language she wishes she had. We also discuss mourning and the ways we try to keep conversation alive with those we've lost, the time I impressed the Princess of Yugoslavia by transliterating the Cyrillic on her family's jewels, and more. More info • Support The Virtual Memories Show via , , or , and subscribe to
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Episode 639 - Keiler Roberts
05/20/2025
Episode 639 - Keiler Roberts
She may be able to quit cartooning (for a while), but can't quit The Virtual Memories Show! With her wonderful new book, (Drawn & Quarterly), Keiler returns to comics with a collection of (mostly) hilarious vignettes about domestic life, middle-age, the impact of multiple sclerosis, and having too many pets. We talk about why she walked away from comics and how she came back, how she avoids memoir in favor of memory (and humor), how she still has anxiety over drawing but is way too tired to have social anxiety anymore, and why she branched into kitschy craft-modes that no one would mistake for art. We get into why she wants her kid to read her journals when she's gone, how MS taught her how to be bored, how men have no idea what perimenopause is like, what it means to be the best appointment of her doctors' day, and the reward of teaching comics to her friends and her mom. We also discuss how helped her back into comics with this book (& encourages her in every other artistic idea she has), how weird it is to see two of Karl's super-detailed pages beside her sparse drawings in Preparing To Bite, and why she loved collaborating with her brother on the grownup fairytale . Plus, she teaches me the difference between living more and doing more, and I read you guys a Rilke poem in the intro. Follow Keiler on , and • More info • Support The Virtual Memories Show via , , or , and subscribe to
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Episode 638 - Peter Kuper
05/13/2025
Episode 638 - Peter Kuper
With his new graphic novel, (WWNorton), brings us the 400-million-year history of insects in their own words as they take a post-human tour of the New York Public Library. We talk about how Insectopolis began when he was around 4 years old and saw the 17-year cicada brood, how Peter needed a new mode of comics-making for this book, and how he made the NYPL a key character in the project. We get into mankind's dependence on insects, the stories of forgotten entomologists (and why they were forgotten), his experience getting a at the NYPL during COVID and how he found all the great & secret rooms while the place was near-empty, the that evolved from the fellowship and how it grew in scale, and his realization that entomologists are like comic fans. We also discuss his wife's great advice going into this project, the fun of getting experts to vet every chapter of Insectopolis, the alchemy that happens when people's passions overlap, how he harnesses the dread of imminent apocalypse to make his art, and more. Follow Peter on , and • More info • Support The Virtual Memories Show via , , or , and subscribe to
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Episode 637 - Vauhini Vara
05/05/2025
Episode 637 - Vauhini Vara
With (Pantheon), tech writer explores how our sense of self has been co-opted, quantified, and exploited by big tech as a way of selling us more stuff or selling us to third parties. We talk about what we talk about when we talk about our Google searches (& Amazon purchases, Twitter subject preferences, etc.), the interface of exploitation and self-expression, what selfhood means to tech companies vs. what it means to us, and what she learned when she fed chapters of her book into ChatGPT. We get into agency vs. coercion, how the promise of tech so often gets inverted, how ChatGPT tried & , why she brought memoir into SEARCHES alongside its other experimental modes, how her husband serves as a low-tech foil in the book, and whether or not we have a say in how the online era plays out. We also discuss why she doesn't post about her personal life, how the book's multiplicity of voices offsets the corporate voice of ChatGPT, what she got out of , the importance of non-VC-funded technology to help us escape exploitative models of information, whether an essayist ever really changes over the course of an essay, and more. Follow Vauhini on , and • More info • Support The Virtual Memories Show via , , or , and subscribe to
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Episode 636 - Craig Thompson
04/30/2025
Episode 636 - Craig Thompson
Artist joins the show at long last to celebrate his new book, (Pantheon). We talk about how he spent ten summers of his childhood helping farm ginseng, how that herb connects rural Wisconsin with China and South Korea, how he balanced history, journalism, economics, and memoir in the pages of his book, and why he chose to make Ginseng Roots as a serial comic rather than a standalone book and how that affected his creative process. We get into how the book serves as a sort of midlife revision of his breakthrough book, , how the last chapter of the book had to happen in near-real-time, how a degenerative condition in his hands became a unifying theme to the book while almost derailing it, how he found the design language of the book and obsessed over a two-color process (to amazing results), and whether this is his swansong for comics (spoiler: it's not!). We also discuss what home means to him, 8 months into being on the road, what it was like discovering that he had a global audience, his ongoing relationship with his evangelical Christian upbringing, his editor's concerns that Ginseng Roots could open him up to accusations of cultural insensitivity (and how he got over it), all while geeking out over our fave cartoonists from the '90s indy period (go, !), and more. Follow Craig on • More info • Support The Virtual Memories Show via , , or , and subscribe to
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Episode 635 - Ari Richter
04/22/2025
Episode 635 - Ari Richter
Artist, professor and now like-it-or-not cartoonist joins the show to talk about his fantastic book, (Fantagraphics). We talk about how he he began this project in the wake of the Tree of Life massacre in 2018, how it helped him exorcise the demons of his imagination after a lifetime of hearing his family's stories about the Holocaust, and how the book centered around intergenerational trauma and collaboration. We get into how he incorporated his grandfathers' holocaust memoirs into the book, why he found different styles for each section of the book, what he had to learn about comics storytelling after a career in fine arts, the revelation of reading 's memoirs and why he avoided rereading during the 5 years he worked on this book. We also discuss how drawing comics has changed his brain, why he was stunned by the commercialism of Auschwitz, why he's glad he got a German passport, why comics folks seem friendlier than fine arts people, the insanity of composing his comics pages in Photoshop (and what happens when he forgets to label his layers), and a lot more. Follow Ari on • More info • Support The Virtual Memories Show via , , or , and subscribe to
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Episode 634 - Dan Nadel
04/15/2025
Episode 634 - Dan Nadel
Author and curator Dan Nadel joins the show to celebrate the publication of his amazing new biography, (Scribner). We get into Robert Crumb's significance in American art, comics, and culture, Dan's first experience with a Crumb comic (it was an ish of ), the challenge of capturing the underground comics scene of the '60s & '70s, and what it took for him to get over the "R. Crumb" persona and realize how integrated Robert's personality is. We talk about Crumb's role as nexus in the history of comics, the book's focus on Crumb's drawing and how different tools opened him up artistically, what it means to see Crumb as part of tradition and not just a conceptual outlier, how his Crumb differs from the Crumb of , and the one detail he's still dying to find out about Zap Comix. We also discuss Dan's comics and art upbringing, how he found his place as a publisher then , how he was affected by the death of Crumb's wife Aline in 2022, how his museum experience prepared him for writing about the racist and sexist aspects of Crumb's comics, the only cartoonist biography he could tackle after Crumb, whether Crumb's succeeds as comics, and a lot more. Follow Dan on • More info • Support The Virtual Memories Show via , , or , and subscribe to
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Episode 633 - See Hear Speak
04/12/2025
Episode 633 - See Hear Speak
No guest? No problem! It's time for another impromptu monologue episode: this time, Gil sorts through family legacies of the genetic and Larkinesque variety, as occasioned by taking his dad for cataract surgery and getting a call from an old & ! Follow Gil on and • More info • Support The Virtual Memories Show via , , or , and subscribe to
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Episode 632 - Peter Trachtenberg
03/31/2025
Episode 632 - Peter Trachtenberg
With his amazing new book (Black Sparrow Press), explores the 50+ years of history for in the far West Village, the role of the arts in New York City, and the ways we build & sustain community. We get into his long-term history with Westbeth, how this book's was born from an essay about the suicide of his friend and Westbeth resident , how Westbeth managed to survive a series of financial crises over the decades before finding a sustainable model, and how architect Richard Meier repurposed the Bell Labs complex into affordable artists' housing in the 1960s. We talk about Westbeth's requirement that residents be professional artists and what that came to mean over the years (esp. when some residents' productivity diminished), what it's like to raise families in Westbeth, and how the community handled generational change. We also discuss how Westbeth reflects New York back on itself, how Vin Diesel's vandalism as a kid growing up in Westbeth led to his acting career, how the Village's Halloween parade originated there, how I stumbled across Westbeth in 2017 during — what else? — , how we build artistic communities when we don't have geographic proximity, whether there's a secret radioactive room left over from the Bell Labs years (!), and more. Follow Peter on , and subscribe to • More info • Support The Virtual Memories Show via , , or , and subscribe to
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Episode 631 - David Shields
03/26/2025
Episode 631 - David Shields
Author returns to the show for a conversation about his new documentary, , and the companion book, (Sublation Media). We get into how the world moved from the death of God to the death of essence to the death of truth, and how deconstruction, once the province of left-wing academia, was weaponized by right-wing authoritarians for political aims. We talk about how much blame he bears for all this with his 2010 book , how it feels to be a radical with deep skepticism of radicals' language, his affinity for Werner Herzog's notion of the ecstatic truth in documentary films, what he learned from interviewing nonfiction writers about the nature of truth, and how he feels about going to his first WWE event. We also discuss nonlinear warfare and the endless deconstruction of reality, how writing can "build a bridge across the abyss of human loneliness" (per DFW), what he's learned from the collaboration of making documentaries, his fixation on hamartia (the tragic flaw), Walter Benjamin's notion of pursuing the truth even if we'll never reach it, bringing the public, social and personal worlds together in his writing, and a lot more. More info • Support The Virtual Memories Show via , , or , and subscribe to
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Episode 630 - Meeting Across The River
03/18/2025
Episode 630 - Meeting Across The River
Uh-oh! Gil doesn't have a guest this week, so he recorded a monologue from a hotel room in Weehawken, NJ during a for his day job! He talks mental health, oblique mythology, Charles Crumb, comics and pharma friends, the St. Patrick's Day Parade, and more! Follow Gil on and • More info • Support The Virtual Memories Show via , , or , and subscribe to
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Episode 629 - Elon Green
03/11/2025
Episode 629 - Elon Green
With (Celadon Books), author brings us an investigation into a terrible episode of police brutality and its aftermath in mid-'80s NYC. We talk about what drew him to the story of , a 25-year-old black artist-model-DJ who died at the hands of transit police in 1983, his amazement that no one else had written this book, and how his early assumptions about a coverup gave way to a different coverup. We get into how he so wonderfully evokes the gritty NYC of that era, spreading out a canvas that takes in the arts scene — think Haring, Basquiat, Madonna — and the awful crimes and police behavior — think Bumpurs, Goetz — of that era. We discuss the art of interviewing people 40+ years after an event without reopening old wounds, the judge on the case who talked with him for 3 hours and shared how his conclusions on the verdict changed, what he sees in Stewart's art, how he tries to build the entire environment of the world he's writing about in his books, why he considers himself a history writer (& despises the "true crime" label & genre), why being a good journalist means having a sense of decency, bringing his to life as an , and more. Follow Elon on and • More info • Support The Virtual Memories Show via , , or , and subscribe to
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Episode 628 - Vanda Krefft
03/04/2025
Episode 628 - Vanda Krefft
Biographer returns to the show to celebrate her wonderful & illuminating new book: (Algonquin Books). We talk about the turn of the (20th) century origins of Katharine Gibbs & her school, the legacy of her executive secretarial course for generations of women, "Gibbs Girls'" descendants' desire to honor their family members, the incredible quality of faculty Gibbs was able to recruit, the risks women had to take to enter the professional workforce, and the Trojan Horse campaign of teaching women to learn how businesses work until they're able to run them themselves. We get into Vanda's desire to write about people who were overlooked in history, how this book veered away from her initial idea, how it required a different mode than , the challenges of century-old research into women's lives, what she had to learn about the history of women in America, the myth that the 1920s were liberating for women, and her interest in mid-century America. We also discuss how the Gibbs school declined when the family finally sold it in the late '60s, what she'd like her next book to be about, her experience living in Santa Monica during the LA fires, a lengthy aside about publishing and the changes I've seen, getting inspired by 's book on , and a lot more. Follow Vanda on • More info • Support The Virtual Memories Show via , , or , and subscribe to
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Episode 627 - Seth Lorinczi
02/25/2025
Episode 627 - Seth Lorinczi
With (Spiral Path Collective Press), explores how trauma can be transmitted over generations, and how an ancient (& new) form of treatment can help overcome it. We talk about finding his family's story of the Holocaust, trying to understand why so much of it stayed hidden, how badly it warped his life, and how he & his wife found answers in psychedelic medicine (MDMA, ayahuasca, toad (!)). We get into the long-term damage of unmetabolized trauma and untouched grief, how psychedelics allowed him to recognize patterns in his life, family history, and the universe, the challenges of researching his family's Holocaust experience in Hungary, how his experiences led to a memoir (& a saved marriage), why Death Trip is a series of surrenders, how his close and distant relatives responded to the book, and why he thinks I should leapfrog therapy and try psychedelics first. We also discuss growing up in the punk scene of Washington, DC (and writing his next book about that), how coincidence becomes important after psychedelic experiences, how some married couples take up salsa dancing but he & his wife took up ayahuasca, how his daughter responded to all this, whether a person can change, how once you get the message you should put down the phone, and a lot more. Follow Seth on and subscribe to his newsletter • More info • Support The Virtual Memories Show via , , or , and subscribe to
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Episode 626 - Martin Mittelmeier
02/18/2025
Episode 626 - Martin Mittelmeier
With (Yale University Press, tr. Shelley Frisch), traces the roots of the Frankfurt School in southern Italy. We talk about the epiphany on the lip of a volcano in Lanzerote that brought this book to life, the years he spent poring over Theodor Adorno's writing (and the temptation to mimic Adorno's style), how Walter Benjamin's principle of porosity arose from both the tuff stone & the way of living of Naples, and the challenge of evoking the Naples of a century ago and how it led to a theory of society. We get into Critical Theory's attempts at understanding populism and oligarchic takeovers and why Adorno is having A Moment in Germany, the fun of speculating about meetings among great thinkers — yeah, I get into George Orwell, Henry Miller, and —, the utopian aspect of local life in Naples and Capri, the complexities of reputation and destiny, and whether Critical Theory can hold up during the hyper-internet era. We also discuss the difficulties of translation with critical theory's associative language, why I need to read Hernán Diaz' , his new work about Thomas Mann working with Adorno on Doctor Faustus in Pacific Palisades (a.k.a. Weimar Under The Palm Trees), how he's changed in the decade-plus since writing the book, and more. • More info • Support The Virtual Memories Show via , , or , and subscribe to
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Episode 625 - Jonathan Ames
02/11/2025
Episode 625 - Jonathan Ames
Can LA private detective Happy Doll live up to the Four Noble Truths and escape the cycle of Samsara? returns to the show to help answer that question and celebrate his new novel, (Mulholland Books)! We talk about the joy of reading (& writing) page-turners, how his lead character Happy Doll has evolved over three novels (so far!), what it's like bringing Buddhism into a detective novel, and how his (& Happy's) LA has changed since he began this series. We get into how he managed to avoid writing about the worst days of the pandemic while keeping Karma Doll contemporary, how writing the Doll novels has affected his understanding of Buddhism, and how he's living up to the lesson he always gave students: write what you love. We also discuss TV writing and how it took him away from prose-writing for a decade or so, the need to make art and the transitoriness of bliss, how the LA fires left him driving all over the place like he was in a novel, his fave reads & TV shows, how we both played with dolls as kids in the woods of northern NJ, and a lot more. Follow Jonathan on • More info • Support The Virtual Memories Show via , , or , and subscribe to
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Episode 624 - Witold Rybczynski
02/05/2025
Episode 624 - Witold Rybczynski
With his latest book, (Norton), architect and architecture & design writer explores how cars evolved from their earliest days through the befuddling styles of today's EVs. We get into the design language of cars and how it had no true precedent, why European styles were so different and varied than America's, his favorite era for car design, and the differences between writing about cars and writing about buildings. We talk about the cars in his life and how he integrated them into The Driving Machine's narrative (including the Mercedes that lasted him 25 years), the lives of the engineers & car-company founders he explored for the book, what he learned by drawing the book's car-illustrations himself, and how drawing all those cars brought him back to his youth. We also discuss the new book he's writing about his dissatisfaction with contemporary architecture, how it resulted from a Chat-GPT 'hallucination,' the cycles of architecture & the death of architecture criticism, the (sorta) imaginary house he designed for himself, and more. More info • Support The Virtual Memories Show via , , or , and subscribe to
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Episode 623 - Matt Madden
01/29/2025
Episode 623 - Matt Madden
Cartoonist rejoins the show to celebrate his new collection, (Uncivilized Books). We talk about the liberation to be found in formal constraints, his history with and its offshoot, how structure can inspire story, and the formal and thematic challenges in sequencing the stories in the collection. We get into how he tried to make the most of a multi-year residency at La Maison des Auteurs in Angouleme, the unwitting influence of Hergé on one of his favorite stories, the changes in his art & storytelling since publishing in 2021, and the "director's commentary" he added as back matter for Six Treasures. We also discuss Lewis Trondheim's challenge to him to make a comic without a formal rule or constraint, his -goal of sharing OUBAPO rules, the balance of comics-making with child-rearing, the fun of making foldy-comics, why it's important not to let the formal constraints overwhelm the heart of the stories, and more. Follow Matt on and and subscribe to his • More info • Support The Virtual Memories Show via , , or , and subscribe to
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Episode 622 - Fred Kaplan
01/20/2025
Episode 622 - Fred Kaplan
After 4+ decades as a reporter and with a half-dozen nonfiction books under his belt, rejoins the show to celebrate his first foray into fiction, (Miniver Press)! We talk about how lockdown got him to start A Capital Calamity, how his history in national security and the defense sector informs the novel (& its accidental march torward WWIII), how his protagonist is & isn't a Fred-Not-Traveled, and what it was like to make things up after a career spent reporting the facts. We get into the moral quandaries of being an insider in Washington, his experience working for Les Aspin in the '70s, the early morning storytelling revelations that opened up the novel to him, and why he set a major scene of the book above The Comedy Cellar in NYC. We also get into whether we're slow-walking into WWIII, the lessons learned from the 2017-2021 era and how they may affect his coverage of the new administration, his jazz recommendations, the fun of dissecting Washington cocktail party culture, the pros & cons of a multipolar world, and more. Follow Fred on , and • More info • Support The Virtual Memories Show via , , or , and subscribe to
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Episode 621 - Mia Wolff
01/14/2025
Episode 621 - Mia Wolff
With (Fantagraphics Underground), artist brings together 100 paintings from more than 40 years of her oeuvre. We talk about how she found the thread & structure for the book, the patterns that emerged as she re-ordered the pieces and stitched them together with new illustrations, comics and prose pieces, and how you can make a joyride of a monograph by introducing your cat into the scene. We get into her dream of catspiders that inspired her for decades, the game of exquisite corpse she's been playing with , and her history in art and side trips into a trapeze act with a circus and teaching martial arts. We also discuss the graphic novel she's working on and how that art parallels her painting, why The Empty Lot has an afterword in the form of a page-by-page tour-conversation with , her love of transparency & translucency and why her paintings of water are so magical, the tension of her pitch meeting with Gary Groth, and a lot more. Follow Mia on and • More info • Support The Virtual Memories Show via or and via
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Episode 620 - Damion Searls
01/07/2025
Episode 620 - Damion Searls
Translator & author kicks off our 2025 season with a talk about his amazing new book, (Yale University Press). We talk about how all writing — translation or not — involves constraints, he balanced the book between philosophical argument and concrete examples of translation, and how he came to define translation as "reading one thing and writing something else." We also get into where all the languages — German, Dutch, Norwegian, French — started for him (+ his lockdown project of teaching himself modern Greek), how the business of translation has changed during his career and the problems with the English market's dominance, how a 'book report' led to him becoming the translator of Nobel-winner , how he edited an abridged version of , and why he only put one negative example in The Philosophy of Translation. Plus we discuss how he doesn't look over his own translators' shoulders, why he resents critics' bias against translation and the notion of "a 'faithful' translation" or "getting it right," how he & his peers fought for royalties over fee-for-service and the days when translators treated like typesetters, and plenty more. More info • Support The Virtual Memories Show via or and via
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Episode 619 - 2024 Recap
12/30/2024
Episode 619 - 2024 Recap
It's the end of the year, so let's take stock of 2024 with a big ol' year-in-review monologue! Your intrepid/decrepit host, Gil Roth, gets personal while talking about what he's learned from the podcast & his guests this year, how they continue to change each other's lives, the moment he found his , his communion with , the validation of his year-long photo-book project, the joy of , a big work-anniversary, the thrilling circumstances of his debilitating neck injury, the best non-clinical moment you can have in an oncology setting, the new addition to the Virtual Memories family, his 2025 wants, and above all, the question of whether a person can really change (and okay, above that, the question of what 'change' means). Follow Gil on , , and • More info • Support The Virtual Memories Show via or and via
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Episode 618 - The Guest List 2024
12/22/2024
Episode 618 - The Guest List 2024
Twenty-two of this year's Virtual Memories Show guests tell us about the favorite books they read in 2024 and the books they hope to get to in 2025! Guests include Roland Allen, Shalom Auslander, Laura Beers, Sven Birkerts, Mirana Comstock, Leela Corman, Nicholas Delbanco, Benjamin Dreyer, Eric Drooker, Randy Fertel, Sammy Harkham, Frances Jetter, Ken Krimstein, Jim Moske, Robert Pranzatelli, Jess Ruliffson, Dmitry Samarov, Dash Shaw, David Small, Benjamin Swett, Maurice Vellekoop, and D.W. Young (+ me)! • More info • Support The Virtual Memories Show via or and via
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Episode 617 - Benjamin Swett
12/17/2024
Episode 617 - Benjamin Swett
With (NYRB), brings us a subtly beautiful series of essays that explore memory and identity and what we really see in the viewfinder. We talk about the role of photography in his life, how Musil, Sebald, and Knausgaard and taught him to trust digressions, the freedom to be found in the essay, how working in the NYC Parks Dept. led him into some strange career choices, and the challenge (& reward) of . We get into our respective rebellions against our fathers and linearity, the loss of his daughter and how her shadow looms over the book, his idea for a negative-autobiography and my own photo-text project, how his family felt about being included in the essays, and the moment he felt comfortable moving from film to digital. We also discuss his 9/11 and what it revealed to him about himself, how the constraint of can lead to good storytelling, the ~30-year gap he took to finish his MFA, the benefits of leaning in to awkwardness and self-revelation, and a lot more. Follow Benjamin on • More info • Support The Virtual Memories Show via or and via
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Episode 616 - Ken Krimstein
12/10/2024
Episode 616 - Ken Krimstein
LIVE from , artist and vulgarizer of history (in the French sense) returns to the show to celebrate his new book, (Bloomsbury)! We talk about the mystery of the 15 months Einstein & Kafka overlapped in Prague, how the two of them invented the modern world, what Ken has learned about graphic storytelling after 3 books, how the theory of relativity bedeviled him since childhood, and how he managed to make a graphic novel about Jews in Prague and not include a golem. We get into all the research and rabbit-holes of this project, including his monthlong research-stay in Prague, as well as the chapter he had to cut on Kafka's love of Yiddish theater, the challenges of portraying Einstein's professional and personal struggles, and his discovery that readers would follow his phantasmagoric flights and surreal episodes. We also discuss Ken's fixations on Mitteleuropa and scenes & salons, ' observation about his art, 's concept of effortless mastery, why he wants to bring some joy to his next project, and more. Follow Ken on • More info • Support The Virtual Memories Show via or and via
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Episode 615 - Eddie Campbell
12/05/2024
Episode 615 - Eddie Campbell
Cartoonist & historian returns to the show with his fantastic new book, (Fantagraphics Underground), which explores turn-of-the-(20th)-century artist, cartoonist, illustrator, caricaturist, interviewer & journalist . We get into how Eddie discovered Kate's work while researching , how Kate wound up interviewing the likes of Mark Twain, Picasso, the Wright Brothers, and other celebs (& non-celebs) of her time, how her self-caricatures serve as a sorta graphic autobiography (and precursor to the whole world of graphic memoir storytelling), her support of women's suffrage, and how I accidentally semi-sorta inspired Eddie to make this book. We also talk about how Kate's story evades sentimentality, how Eddie & formed the Digital Art Burglars firm™, what he's learned from exploring the early history of American cartooning, why his next book is about the Midwest school of cartooning, how he wound up writing the comics histories he wanted to read, and why he had to pull a page from this book due to a complaint from the printer. Plus we discuss his new graphic novel about how he met Audrey, how his comic strip of the , a murder victim in Sydney, led to him working with Alan Moore on , his life-lessons about making every pitch & taking every job that was offered, and why Kate Carew was such an enormous outlier in the world of cartooning. Follow Eddie on • More info • Support The Virtual Memories Show via or and via
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Episode 614 - Caitlin McGurk
11/26/2024
Episode 614 - Caitlin McGurk
Comics librarian and curator returns to the show to celebrate her amazing new book, (Fantagraphics). We talk about Caitlin's shock at her 2012 discovery of Barbara Shermund's incredible gag-comics and illustrations in the archive of the , how her interest in Barbara evolved from blog posts to a museum exhibit to a book, the challenge of writing about someone who did no interviews or press and had no close relatives, and how easily women get erased from history. We get into the gestalt of Barbara's fantastic linework and washes and her wry sense of humor, why Caitlin wound up writing an academic press version of the book before rewriting it for a trade publisher, the challenges & rewards of designing a book to showcase so much art, how Barbara helped create the look of The New Yorker in its early years, why Caitlin speculated (but not too much) about Barbara's sexuality. We also discuss the malleability of history, how the Billy Ireland has changed in the , the pep talk she wished she could have gotten from our late friend , time Al Capp (!!) advocated for allowing women into the National Cartoonists Society, the incredible story of tracking down Barbara's remains and giving her a proper funeral 35 years after her death, and a lot more. Follow Caitlin on and the • More info • Support The Virtual Memories Show via or and via
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